


Genetic Modifications

by rin0rourke



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Blood and Gore, Explicit Language, Genetic Engineering, Human Experimentation, M/M, Organ Theft, Post-Apocalypse, Sexual Content, Threesome - M/M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-01 03:04:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5189705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rin0rourke/pseuds/rin0rourke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three thousand years after the first migration from Earth the human colonies find their genetic pool under strain from endless tampering customization. Dangerous birth defects, disease, and fad designer D.N.A is taking its toll on the species.</p><p>Scientists must obtain uncurrupted samples of human DNA to combat the threat, but no true human exists anymore. The fall of an oppressive Universal government left scars, their histories wiped clean, their planet colonies mistrustful of one another, and their homeworld location lost to time.</p><p>Worse yet, Earth Revivalism has spread through the stars, with a high demand for old Earth features.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Boy From Earth

Cross studied his guest over the rim of a wineglass.

He supposed he should feel privileged, that the head of one of the UP’s top devisions had requested a face to face, but he couldn’t drum up the enthusiasm. Particularly when said commander was an irritating, idealistic, little military oppologist.

And a former friend.

Who had droped down ontop of him in a cloaked ship and hailed his station, with all the vieled threats and legalese flashy government desk riders used when trying to wrangle a conversation out of drifters who liked to make themselves scarce.

Komui was one of many persistent annoyances he dealt with every handful of years. Old wounds with their phantom pain, the aches of a youth spent in war were more than just in the body, but mind and heart as well.

He had on occasion enjoyed the bittersweet ache of memories revisited with past friends. Disillusioned and antisocial he had kept it to a minimum,  but still made time. Even five years ago he might have felt some tug of pleasure beneath the irritation. But that was five years ago, and this was today.

And today he had a promise to keep, and a boy he was responsible for.

“I told you years ago, Komui. No.”

“Cross. You can’t just keep him out here.  Hunting old ships, mining old landing sites.”

“Sure I can, kid’s got a gift for it. Found this old station didn’t he?” He brushed it off casually, but he was shaken. Scared? No, but nervous.  “Working on this crash site now, you remember the Delligatti cruise ship? Twenty years ago she malfunctioned, spaced all her passengers and crew in their sleep, kept on cruising along.  We found her.”

“That’s a nice find for you, I’m sure. There were no deaths, so it’s not high profile, you shouldn’t have any problens with the original owners when you file Finder’s reports and Salvage permits.”

Cross snorted. Paperwork.  Yeah, that would absolutely happen.

“Cross.” Komui began again.

“You’re not taking him.” This time he stood, he was a tall man, the years in low gravity had left his muscles lean, his face miraculously unaged. His hair was blood and fire down to his hips, his one good eye a laser cuting Komui to the core. Half his face was hidden behind a smooth white mask.

Komui never learned what injury Cross hid behind it. Had never asked.

“We risked too much, lost too much for you to take him. He won’t be their pawn, I promised Mana that.” God damn it, its the only promise in his life he hadn’t broken yet.

“The Planetary Order knows he came from Earth, Cross. Did you think you could hide it, hide him? The unregistered bacterium you’ve released into unprotected waystations alone is enough to have you charged and imprisoned. Earth’s remaining humans are a protected subspecies, if any of the unsavory characters I presume you deal with learn his genealogy he’d be captured and sold at any underground auction. My god, he could be cut up for his DNA and sold in peices. Does none of that even occure to you?”

“So I should hand him over to the authorities,  to be a lab experiment and a soldier? So they can go on trying to preserve every last line of Earth like its some God?” He stalked to the cabinet and refilled his glass. “How much did your parents pay, how terribly important was it to them to have babies with extinct Earth racial traits? Were your sister’s legs worth it?”

Komui’s face went red with temper, his hands clenched in his lap ached, but he kept his voice low, “My sister is not the topic here today Cross.”

“No, the boy is, and I will tell you Komui, so you can run back to your superiors and tell them. If they try to take him, if they so much as come within the same system as him, I will kill them.” He nosed his glass, sipped, and returned to his seat. “Now get your ass off my station.”


	2. A Boy And His Drone

Below the ever spinning rings of the station, ignorant of the politicking over his life, Allen Walker drifted through the dark, long uninhabited elegance of the salvaged ship.

The lost cruise ship showed no marks of it's isolation, no wear or aging. For one hundred fifty years it roamed, far from planet or star, in the kilometers upon kilometers of nothing. The luxury of it reflected the indulgence of its guests, wealth, arrogance, opulence, all preserved in the merciless cold and dark of space. It was gaudy and glamorous both, somehow sophisticated in it's flamboyancy. 

Timcanpy, a rotund golden arial robot roughly the size of his head, zoomed about with a kind of energetic curiosity more befitting a gleeful puppy than a research drone. Allen didn't see any reason to waste jet power when he could casually float down the hallway at his leisure, hand over hand on the tastefully decorated rungs of emergency ceiling grips. Never know when the artigrav would fritz, particularly back then when it was still fresh tech, but that didn't mean they had to be ugly. 

His shoulder and head lamps illuminated his way, revealing bold reds and warm reflective metalic. The theme was obviously influenced by the revival movement, Allen wasn't much on ancient Earth cultures, history had been his worst subject, but he knew revivalism had been big the last century, particularly the pre-industrial age aristocracies. Rich people just loved to mimic other rich people.

He didn't understand the reasons, but he could appreciate the results, this ship had been a beauty in it's prime, a shiny copper bullet cutting through space towards it's target. 

He wondered if they gave it a jump, would it start again? Would it come to life like a living thing shocked out of the embrace of death? Or would controlled obsolescence have it limp along on emergency lights and little else? A cadaver made to spasm and twitch with a hit of electricity. 

Wouldn't know until he tried, couldn't try until he was back on the station. He let go of the last rung at the end of the hallway and looked into the great beyond just outside the door.

There was fear, instictual, theory had it that humans crawled out of the ocean, and so it was the open waters they dreaded. This wasn't water, but it was wide and dark and full of danger, spawling out endlessly to untouchable distances, yet ready always to suck you right out of your shelter like a child's boogieman, slurp you up and swallow you down. 

Open space was the monster outside every window, thousands of years did could curb the rate of accidents but it did nothing to change the elemental truth, to venture out was almost certain death.

He jumped.

There was vertigo, centuries in space had also not been enough to evolve humans out of the need for the sturdy, the solid, the assurance of ground, the metal cage of a ship was enough an illusion to supply the mind, until you faced it. Beyond the airlock was open and empty. 

Allen loved it.

The universe was stunning, all around him was crowded with trillions upon trillions of distant stars. Allen did a slow roll, Timcanpy spiraling around him in a jolly corckscrew, and watched the universe spin. Most people he met found space monotonous, the endless passing of stars against the void, spacefarers spent too much time among them to appreciate their worth. There was no drama here, the theater of the universe was always vacant, even the occasional cluster of astroids had miles and miles stretched between any particular one.

Allen, he didn't mind the calm. There was plenty excitement to be had in the hunt, the search for the lost, finding, touching, bringing something of the past back out of all that endless dark. A salvager knew how to harvest the fruit of space. He reached his hands out, as if to cup a scoopful of that glittering black in his palms. The universe provided, if you took the time to look, and when you looked you learned to apreciate.

He could stay here forever, in this weightless soundless world, the diamonds of the stars dancing around him. But he really couldn't, like all living things he had his biological needs, and such needs were aboard the Ark.

It had been white once, it's shifting sections in constant motion had gleamed behind a large, cubic shield. However the shield was almost always inactive outside of travel, they simply lacked the resources to sustain it long term, and exposure to the debris of space had chipped and dented and worn away most of it's shine. 

The Ark had been built thousands of years ago, during the great migration from Earth, and was meant to sustain a sizable populace when it was running, with large agricultural rooms, hydroponics, and fisheries. It was Cross' first real find as a salvager, an ancient, temperamental beast of a space station that probably belonged in a museum somewhere, and if the Universal Planetary Order had it's way that's probably where it would end up. But in the tension fueled state of the colonies today, and lightyears upon lightyears between them, noone had the manpower or authority to chase and seize from two experienced men with a reputation of disappearing into the void of space. 

They parted it out now and again to artifact collectors as they upgraded it, so that all these years later it resembled more a rat ship than a sign of immigrant engeneering.

Oh the false gravity may be reliant on the functionality of spinning sections, the living quarters sparse, and the equipment exploration age, but it ran well, and with the occasional upgrades from more recent era salvages it managed to keep one foot out of obsolescence. 

The cruise ship had more than enough equipment in it to do some much needed repairs and still turn a nice profit. Which was great in Allen's opinion, as he was tired of the hot/cold relationship he currently had with his shower.

He equalized with a few little bursts to counter his roll and reached his hand out for one of the many rungs along the side of the Ark, Tim darting on ahead to the airlock door. 

Above them, just out of sight, Komui and his crew were quickly becomming just another flickering spec of light amid the stars. 


End file.
